Some of the really interesting things that might get revealed if Felix Sater’s testimony before the HPSCI on March 27 comes after the release of the MUELLER REPORT

I came across the information last night that @FelixSater’s testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), which had previously been scheduled for March 14, has been postponed to March 27 (due, it is said, to a scheduling conflict).

Sater’s testimony on March 14 was expected to be severely restricted, as the HPSCI seemed to be mainly interested in Sater’s work on the Trump Tower Moscow project, which at this point, anyway, is probably the least interesting subject to question him about. (It would, however, be of great interest to know whether Sater, as a good friend of Michael Cohen’s who worked with him on the Trump Tower project, could help to confirm or disconfirm the BuzzFeed allegation that President Trump in some fashion or other “directed” Cohen to lie to Congress about the termination date of the project.)

Apart from that question, though, it would be much more interesting for the committee to question Sater about Trump Soho, Bayrock, and above all else, to get Sater under oath about what he may have known or heard about Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

Questioning Sater under oath about this would be particularly interesting (and threatening to Sater) if, as I have long believed, he is the very important Source E of the Steele dossier.

On reviewing some of my many writings on the Steele dossier and Felix Sater last night, I came across a piece I wrote on 15 Aug 2018 that I had forgotten about completely.

In that piece, I referred to an article by John Solomon which was published in The Hill on 7 Aug 2018, in which Solomon reported on hundreds of pages of emails, texts, handwritten notes, calendar notations and other documentation that Bruce Ohr had turned over to the committee (and that Republicans on the committee had clearly leaked to him).

(To judge from Solomon’s article, these materials are even more interesting than the transcript of Bruce Ohr’s closed door hearing before the HPSCI on 28 Aug 2018 has proved to be. This transcript had not been available to the public, but Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), tired of all the foot-dragging, he said, took it upon himself to upload it on Friday.)

Anyway, what struck me most about Solomon’s August article in The Hill was the following passage that I had quoted from it:

(For “investigators” (sic) read “investors.”)

It is perfectly clear that Felix Sater is the “longtime associate of Trump” who had “put together several real estate deals for Russian investors” whom Simpson had mentioned to Ohr — even if Ohr was not in a position to realize it at the time.

The only person in the world that Simpson’s description fits is Felix Sater — the Source E of the Steele dossier.

To see why, compare the description of the intermediary in question (the “longtime associate of Trump”) with memos #080 and #095 of the Steele dossier, which describe Source E as an “ethnic Russian close associate of US presidential candidate Donald Trump.” Furthermore, the rest of Simpson’s description — “a longtime associate” who “put together several real estate deals for Russian investors to purchase Trump properties” applies to Felix Sater (and only Felix Sater).

This description describes Sater to a T, because Sater worked for years as the head of Bayrock, and while he was there his whole job was to put together Trump real estate deals for Russian investors.

Note that Simpson’s description of that particular intermediary rules out Sergei Millian, because, unlike Sater, Millian was not a “longtime associate of Trump” (Trump seems to have hardly known Millian, if he knew him at all), and Millian certainly did not “put together several real estate deals for Russian investors to purchase Trump properties.” At most, Millian has claimed to have sold some Trump condos in south Florida to some Russian investors, and even that has been disputed by Trump Org. In any case, selling some condos in a Trump development falls way short of “putting real estate deals together for Trump properties,” which is exactly what Sater did for investors and for Trump for years when he was at Bayrock.

In the transcript of his hearings before the HPSCI on 28 Aug 2018, Ohr was asked to name some of the intermediaries between the Trump campaign and Russia Simpson had told him about. Ohr was hesitant to do so because he had to rely on his memory of the conversation(s), but he did mention Sergei Millian and Paul Manafort. Ohr did not mention Sater. Apparently, Simpson didn’t give Ohr that name, otherwise Ohr would almost certainly have remembered it.

Another odd thing is that Sater is not mentioned by Simpson in Corn and Isikoff’s book RUSSIAN ROULETTE either, although Simpson did — very significantly — identify Millian with Source D of the dossier for their book. Even more remarkably, their book says nothing about Source E at all. Not one word — even though Source E is a much more important source in the Steele dossier than Source D (who we now know is Millian).

I bring all this up now, after having learned that Sater’s testimony has been postponed to March 27, because the postponement of Sater’s hearing may be consequential in terms of what Sater can be questioned about by the committee.

Sater has said that he has been a source for, and that he has been fully cooperative with, the Mueller investigation. Consequently, as was the case with his old buddy Michael Cohen, Sater’s arrangements with the HPSCI surely had restricted the topics that could be covered to ones that would not interfere with ongoing investigations, including the Mueller investigation.

But what if Mueller’s report is released to the public before Sater’s testimony on March 27? Would the public release of the MUELLER REPORT mark a termination date for the investigation that would remove Sater’s right to claim immunity for questions the committee might want to ask him about Trump-Russia collusion?

Two anonymous DOJ officials cited in an article in ABC News today are contending that even after the MUELLER REPORT has been submitted, ongoing investigations would bar the Department from disclosing the investigation’s supporting materials — or at least a lot of them — due to investigations that would still be ongoing:

If so, this would bar witnesses from testifying before Congressional committees as well.

As ABC News points out, precedents (and the formidable Constitutional powers of Congress) make the picture rather murky. In any case, it does appear that if the MUELLER REPORT in any form is released before March 27, it is possible that Sater will find it difficult, if not impossible, to claim witness immunity about what he knows, if anything, about Trump-Russia collusion when he appears before the committee. And this will matter, because Felix Sater is SOURCE E OF THE STEELE DOSSIER.

Note in particular that Source E (=Sater) is a key figure in the Steele dossier’s “golden showers” allegation (the so-called pee-tape allegation).

According to Steele memo #080, Source E (Sater) heard that allegation from Source D (Millian). Sater must have then passed it on to one or more intermediaries, who then passed it on to Steele. (Who these informants were we do not know, but Mueller certainly does, because Team Mueller has been briefed by Steele.) The memo then says that Source E (Sater) provided an introduction for a “company ethnic Russian operative” (someone working for Steele’s company Orbis in Moscow) to another Source F, whom the dossier describes as a female staffer at the hotel when Trump had stayed there, who also confirmed the story. (For a more detailed account of Sater and the pee-tape allegation, see this thread.)

It is possible that the “pee-tape” story is Russian deza (disinformation), just as the Cohen-in-Prague story is undoubtedly deza (but very interesting deza at that). On the other hand, the “golden showers” allegation may not be Russian deza. Mueller has undoubtedly investigated the question, since Mueller will have been very interested in tracking down any allegation that Moscow has kompromat on Trump, and Mueller has almost certainly reached his own conclusion about it, based on the evidence he has found.

This has consequences for Sater, because Sater doesn’t know what Mueller knows — and won’t have any idea what he knows unless there is something in Mueller’s report that indicates that Mueller either does, or doesn’t, believe Sater was Source E of the dossier and that the “golden showers” event in Moscow occurred.

Assume that the MUELLER REPORT, in whatever form we get it, doesn’t reveal that. In that case, if Sater is asked by the committee on March 27 (or at some later date): “Have you ever heard anyone tell you about a sexually compromising event involving President Trump that took place at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow during the Miss Universe Pageant there in 2013?”, Sater will be in a tight spot. He won’t be able to deny it if he did hear it from Millian, because he doesn’t know what Mueller knows, and no sane person would lie before Congress who is in that position.

But if Sater is forced to say Yes, he exposes himself as Source E of the dossier (which would surely make his reply the news story of the day, no matter whatever else happens that day, including any crazy thing Trump might say or do). The only possible alternative with a good outcome for Sater would then be that the pee-tape allegation is false (deza). If so, let’s find out. (Steele has said that the chances are 50–50, anyway, that it wasn’t deza.)

If that is the sort of questioning that is allowed to happen on March 27, it will have been well worth waiting another week for the HPSCI hearing — because in that case we will be able to watch the rather enigmatic and elusive Mr. Sater, who has dodged so many bullets in his life, really squirm under questioning by the committee.

Sater has spent his whole life walking on both sides of a great many streets. Eventually, that sort of thing catches up with a person. It seems likely that it has done so here, because whenever he testifies, and whatever he testifies about, Sater will likely be attacked by both parties in the committee hearings: Democrats because they will want to make Trump look bad, and Republicans because they will want to undermine Sater any way they can in order to protect Trump. (Republican attacks will probably be particularly irksome for Sater, who has been a staunch, lifelong Republican.)

I have written a lot in the last couple of years about Sater, and will be uploading a timeline on him and links to some of my longer postings on him, a few days before the March 27 hearing (assuming that the March 27 hearing doesn’t get postponed as well).